Rhein Main AB (Frankfurt Airport)

[steveno]

in the spring of 1973 I got on an OJT program working with PAN-AM in their avionics shop.

The shop boss took me out a PAN-AM 747 that was in the Lufthansa hangar. at the time it was supposed to have been the biggest hangar in the world. you could put 6 747's in it and close the doors and i think there might have been a room for a couple of smaller airplanes. it was BIG. when the Airbus A-380 came out Lufthansa had to build a bigger hangar just for them.

one of the days out on the flight line I noticed a bunch of police standing around. we stopped and here comes an EL AL airliner being followed by an armored car. when an EL AL airliner comes in it was met at the end of the runway and went to the parking space. when the airliner got ready to leave the armored car followed the airliner out to the end of the runway until it took off. I don't know when this really started but I would imagine not long after Munich. at different times there was an armored car outside the front gate of the base. I had started carrying my Kodak pocket 110 camera and the police seen me taking pictures and it was suggested that I stop. since they had the guns I stopped.

on a 747 it is possible to carry a spare engine down range if needed. the spare engine can be bolted up to the fuselage between the the fuselage and the #2 engine. the engine of course has special covers for it. it also creates enough drag that depending upon where it is going it will have to make a fuel stop.

one the days on the flight line I noticed an airplane the kind of looked like a DC-9 but then again it didn't. I asked one of the PAN-AM guy what it was. it was a TU-134A (the Tupolev version of the DC-9). I asked if we could go on it and one of the guys asked the pilot and said yes. it was unusual in that it had a glass nose. there wasn't any center pedestal line you would normally see and it had separate controls for the pilot and co-pilot. there was a passageway that went down to the nose and that is where a navigator sat with his equipment. the pilot was an older guy and probably a party member but not hardcore. the co-pilot was much younger and had a much stronger pro party attitude. he was not happy we were being shown the cockpit. Russian bombers had a thing for glass noses on some of their bombers so that was probably a holdover in the design.

in 2005 Rhein Main AB was given back to the Germans. I think they had the dozers running during the give back ceremony. the only thing left is the memorial to the Berlin Airlift.

 

[H Richard]

I remember flying into Rhine Main in 61 when I was stationed in England and come over for a leave to visit a cousin stationed nearby. Later when stationed in Chaumont France we would go there to buy stuff in the Bx which was much bigger than our little base. (Gee, that was 54 years ago, time flies.)

 

[Lee Barner]

flew in and out of RM many times between 80 and 85. lee

 

[LTC]

I spent a couple weeks at RM during 1969 on a TDY with the 36TAS out of Langley Field. I was a FMS engine shop troop. We were at Mildenhall, UK until we ran out of work in the engine shop. As the NCO in charge of our 1/2 dozen engine mechanics I requested that we be sent to RM where the rest of the 36th was.

It took a Major from the 36th to convince a Lt. in the UK shop to allow us the move. The Lt. wasn't happy as we were doing all his CS make work projects he didn't want to give to his own troops.

At RM we got to watch what I believe was the first C5A take off in Europe. We thought for sure it would never get off the ground. It was huge compared to our C130's.

LTC

 

[Roadtrash]

Flew in and out of RM on a C130 a couple of times back in the 60's.

 

[steveno]

in one of the REFORGER exercises one year they had 7 C-5A's on the ground at one time. the flight line was so crowded with airplanes they had 2 of the C-5A's parked on the civilian side. there were a LOT of airplanes going in and out. the early days of the C-5A were kind of interesting in that sometimes when they lower it for loading they couldn't get it back up. it was also so big that the cherry picker used to work upon the tail had to be brought over on a C-5A.

for you Navy guys the C-5A is the only "Fat Albert". a C-130 is a "Herk" or "Herky Bird".

 

[peyton]

My wife and I had a Wild Germany vacation, I flew in from Baghdad and she flew in from Texas and met at Frankfurt. We hopped in the rental car and drove over to Rhein Main base and bought the essentials, whiskey, wine and food. The store managers were telling us to get as much as we could carry because the Base was closing that week.

It was truly a sad occasion, the workforce of US and German citizens had few job prospects and all of the military retirees in the Frankfurt area were sad to lose all the support services.

Previously we both flew into Rhein Main in 1980 on an Air Force C-5 and started our Army four year tour in Germany and flew out back to the US in 1984.

 

[steveno]

the only air bases left in Germany are Ramstein and Spangdahlem. Rhein Main , Hahn , Sembach , Zweibrucken , Bitburg and Weisbaden are gone

 

[Mainsail]

The hotel on Frankfurt had a gun shop on the lower level for a while. I stayed there many many times.

Towards the end they put us up at the Stiegenberger outside the housing gate. I always gave that hotel bonus points because you could see the TV from the toilet.

 

[Dave_n]

Hahn has a new lease on life as the Ryan Air stop for Frankfurt and South Western Germany. When my son was a Raven he was based out of Sembach (about 5 years ago). Dave_n

 

[MORSNO]

Rhein Main was my first base (April 1984-June 1988) in my 20 year career...Loved it! The US dollar and German Mark exchange rate was awesome during that period, making for lots of travel, eating, and drinking for very little money. I was able to spend a few days there on my return trip to the states from Bagram and Kandahar Afghanistan in 2002. The base was divided in half by a chain link fence with the flightline half of the base still in use. The Airman's club and the Galaxy club were still open also. The old consolidated NCO/Officers club and Hotel were "outside" of the fence and being used by private entities. I stayed in the old single Senior NCO quarters that were located in the back corner of the housing area (Gateway Gardens) as they were being used as transient quarters. I was able to go downtown by rail to the Hauptbahnhof and then over to Sachsenhausen and partake in a few drinks and dinner. Wow, the prices had skyrocketed in 14 years and since converting over to the Euro.

Thanks for bringing back the memories!

 

[steveno]

when I got to Germany in 1970 the exchange rate was 4 marks to the dollar. the bus ride to the train station was 1 mark. we would go to Sachsenhausen for the apple wine with ripchen and kraut. you eat there for 10 marks. when I left in 1973 it was about 3 marks to the dollar. I went back in 1975 as a civilian an it 2.50 marks to the dollar and still fairly cheap. Frankfurt was a nice town with lots of stuff to do

 

[steveno]

at about the 1:35 mark you will see the Lufthansa hanger that I talikng about. at the time in was supposed to be the biggest hangar in the world.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T83qCG32_4[/ame]

 

[Kernel Crittenden]

In the '73 to '75 time frame my father was stationed small facility near Wiesbaden AFB. My brother and I were members of Troop 11 of the BSA Trans Atlantic Council. We'd go camping about every other weekend.

There's a forest boarding Frankfurt Airport to the south and west and our Boy Scout troop would camp there frequently, being only about 15 miles from Wiesbaden.

The Army must of also used this area for training, because large swathes of it were all tore up by, we assumed, the tracks of armored vehicles. The whole area had a kind of just-hit-by-a-tornado look to it. Which was perfect for our purposes. (Unlimited fire wood). We were all Air Force brats, so we hardly even notice the four engine jet liners roaring over our heads every few minutes.

Many a good memory of ghost stories around the camp fire, bacon for every meal, games of capture the flag, and nocturnal terror raids of neighboring Girl Scout camps (almost got kicked out for that caper).

One thing we use to do was wait until the Scout Masters went off to bed. Then we would sneak out of camp and walk over to the snack bar & vend-o-land at the airport terminal. It was only about a mile away and was open 24 hrs a day. Load up on "hoagie bait". Saw my first microwave oven there.

 

[Rustyt1953]

My dad made many a trip in both C-47's and C-54's during the Berlin airlift.
Of his 2 years in the Army and 20 in the Air Force, his memories of the kids, with their faces pressed to the fence, hoping for candy, were his most bittersweet.

You'da liked my dad.

 

[Kinman]

I was stationed in Russelsheim, AM in the 78th Trans. Co. back in 71-73. I was in and out of Rhine Main alot, it was a huge facility. We usually pulled flatbed trailers out of our motor pool, then drove to Rhine Main where we dropped the trailer, then picked up the assigned load and went on from there. One of the best jobs I had in Germany was called "The Belgium Mail Run". I started off the week driving to Rhine Main where I picked up an empy enclosed mail trailer. Then I would drive to Frankfurt and back up to load at headquarters, picking up an armed guard with the load. We drove to Bonn where we got more stuff unloaded and loaded then on to Shape Belgium or NATO headquarters, this was the coolest part because Queen Juliana of the Netherlands didn't mind our military vehicles on her highways, she just thought it would look better if we were in civilian clothes, so we got to change into t-shirts and jeans to drive on into Shape Headquarters, back up the trailer and unhook, then bobtail the tractor into Brussels and stay at a great bed and breakfast, which usually allowed us to hit the town which was weird in that it was like the place was dead for such a big city, it took us awhile to figure out where the action was. The next day we reversed the thing except by not going back to our respective company areas, just back and forth daily from Frankfurt to Shape or Shape to Frankfurt. For a couple of months all I saw of the company area and my apartment was on the weekends, I went through all my money because of the partying in Brussels but we did stuff like sell our spare tire and extra 5 gallon cans of oil I pirated from the motor pool, the motor sarge was angry and told me I needed to find a more secure place to park my tractor, it was a great gig. The other great thing was I don't know if any of you ever had to serve in a place like SHAPE but if you were enlisted or a jr. officer type all you would do all day is salute, some NATO countries like Italy have their enlisted guys with so much stuff on their uniforms you can't tell if they are officers or not, but here we were in civies...it was great, ever now and then you might get hassled but just show your I.D. and a brief explanation "Belgium Mail Run" was all we needed.

 

[Mainsail]

Frankfurt gets a mention in Van Morrison's song Wavelength- not the studio version but a version on a bootleg I picked up some years ago:

"I hear the Voice of America calling on my wavelength.
Man I was coming out; Frankfurt am Main
I hear the Voice of America calling on my wavelength
Singing come back baby come back...."

 

[steveno]

depending upon where they had to fly the flight crews of our medevac airplanes had to wear civilian clothes. that usually meant non-Nato countries or if they had to make a flight behind the curtain

 

[Mainsail]

depending upon where they had to fly the flight crews of our medevac airplanes had to wear civilian clothes. that usually meant non-Nato countries or if they had to make a flight behind the curtain

Right before the Gulf War kicked off, I was on a crew assigned to fly to Moscow for the INF Nuclear Treaty. I was on a backup crew when the war itself kicked off (once you had that visa, you could count on doing INF missions) staying in the hotel there on Frankfurt. The other crews were doubled and tripled up with very short crew rests, while we all had single rooms and days off....

We flew over in our flightsuits but if we were going to leave the airfield we had to change into 'conservative dress' civilian clothes. Red Square in the 90s:

 

[Kinman]

My MOS and nearly all my training was in regard to transportation. Rhine Main was huge in the transportation field in Germany, nearly all of the material used by the Army either came in from Bremerhaven by sea or Rhine Main by air. The major trucking units worked out of either outlet and rarely crossed paths. We had guys in my outfit that were "million milers" having put over a million miles under their butts driving military tractor trailer rigs, thats a pretty amazing feat especially when you consider West Germany was only about the size of Oregon. We had a couple duece n halfs but they were primarily there for exercises when we needed to go to the field and didn't have much function hauling freight, the tractors we had in the early 70's were 1966 overhead cab IHC 5 ton tractors with 205hp Detroit Diesels and 5 speed trannies with a 2-spd rear axle and only one rear axle, they were very squirrelly bobtail and fun to drive in the rain where you get them to drift on corners. Someone once said the Army got a smokin hot deal on the tractors because they were too short for American tastes, without the added factor of trailer brakes they were woefully underbraked, like a rollerskate. We'd get the mechanics to jack the fuel pumps and get a counterfiet tachograph key that was floating around to unlock the tachograph the Army installed to tell-tale what we were doing and when, then take a couple of wraps on the needle with a certain kind of rubber band. Then run those little two stroke diesels so hard the black smoke would pour out the stacks, I remember having to carry a five gallon can on tractor to keep up with oil consumption...the Germans hated us.